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Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 61-70

Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

We left off last week with the spec 0/51/0 and already killing boars in Outland. Comments from last week were mostly opposed to my advice to go WF/FT for weapon imbues, saying that it's best to wait until more elemental talents are added before leaving WF/WF behind. I can see their point, but can't imagine that either way is going to make a significant impact in terms of time lost due to deaths or slower kills. My rationale for WF/FT is that its likely you're facing off against higher level mobs than your current level which may take a bit more to whack down. This means more DoT ticks from Flame Shock, more Maelstrom Weapon procs, and more Earth Shocks, and thus a healthier balance between physical and magical damage.

Regardless of you off-hand imbue of choice, we're really in the heart of enhancement right now. After hitting 60 we get spell upgrades every level instead of every other level, but the exciting talents and spells are already in our books so there's not much new and fun stuff happening.

<Random Enchantment>

Moving into Outlands means there more than just "of the <animal>" when it comes to random enchantments on uncommon quality items. Which ones to take and which to sell is the big question. To figure out what is an upgrade for you many people turn to the add-on Pawn. With this add-on you can assign a weight to each type of item stat and for every item it returns a total value. It's a quick and easy way to approximate upgrades. Unfortunately I didn't save any of my old Pawn values from Burning Crusade, but I did an approximation based on my "fresh level 80" values with consideration given to the lack of elemental talents, thinking about the solo-quester fighting same or slightly higher level mobs, and added in a dash of straight up pulling numbers out of my hat.

If you're playing along at home with Pawn here are the values I'm working with:

Str - 1.10

Agi - 1.80

Int - 1.40

AP - 1.00

Crit - 2.00

Hit - 1.75

Exp - 1.50

Haste - 1.40

ArP - 1.4

SP- 0.80

When it comes to random enchantments our top 5 in Outlands end up being:

of the Tiger

of the Invoker

of the Falcon

of Power

of the Bandit

This is all in my Leveling Enhancement Google doc. You can save a copy for yourself and experiment with the values at the top to come up with what suits your play style. Now on to leveling!

Level 61

Talent point: finish off Unleashed Rage in the enhancement tree. After this we'll move into the elemental tree.

Spell upgrades: Fire Nova, Chain Heal

Level 62

Talent point:Concussion 1/5 is our first spend down the elemental side of things. Our enhancement build is set up around mana regen/conservation so dipping into Convection should not be necessary; spend the points for more damage.

Spell upgrades: Lightning Bolt, Water Shield

Level 63

Level 64

New spells:Wrath of Air Totem is the new spell at level 64, not that we'll use it that much. This can be useful if you are in a very caster-heavy raid and you are the only shaman, but for 5-mans stick with your Windfury Totem because it supports you and the tank.

Spell upgrades: Flametongue Weapon

Level 65

Level 66

New spells:Earth Elemental Totem is a fun one, if sometimes disappointing. It has two main uses: decoy and annoy. It serves as a great decoy when you need to run away bravely from a bad pull. Be warned though, an elite mob will rip through as though it were a Mud Elemental Totem instead of earth. Outside of elites, it's very hand for escaping bad situations. As for annoy, I think it's an unintended design consequence of having a pet without a pet bar. We can't tell it what to attack or where to attack, it's leashed to its totem but yet still loves to run out and pull that next mob you didn't want. I will give the earth ele credit for one thing: when I was farming Kurenai rep in Nagrand I would drop it at the bonfire in Sunspring Post to collect all the Murkbloods, use a Fire Nova Totem (back in the day) and a Magma Totem, heal the Ele and then melee and Chain Lightning them down. Well, once every 10 minutes I'd do that. Annoying that earth ele is.

Spell upgrades: Frostbrand Weapon, Lesser Healing Wave

Level 67

Level 68

New spells:Fire Elemental Totem is the new and improved version of the earth ele. Whereas Earthy serves to decoy and annoy, Fire serves to destroy and annoy. Still leashed to the totem, still no pet bar, and totally no control over what it attacks, what it does, or how it does it. But what it does do is melee, cast fire blast (single target) and fire nova (AoE). It's awesome at destroying as long as the aggro is on someone else.

To Northrend! At level 68 we are allowed to head to Northrend and experience all the glory that is Wrath of the Lich King. Definitely head out and start questing right away. Unfortunately there are no boars in the frozen north. Which means no BBQ, no Beer Basted Boar Ribs, and no pulled boar sandwiches. It's a shame really, there's nothing quite like lightning-struck barbequed boar.

Pro tip:Change out one of your minor glyphs to the Glyph of Water Walking because in the starter zones there's plenty of island hopping and water running and you'll be happy to be both a shaman and one that doesn't need reagents.

Level 69

Level 70

New spells:Bloodlust / Heroism. Oh sweet momma! Let's take a moment to reflect on the greatness of Lust/Hero. (A moment of chin-stroking contemplation passes) Yes indeed, we are now complete. You thought you could solo elites before? Now you can smash those elites down with barely a scratch to your sexy enhance hide. Group quest for 3? Might not even need Lust/Hero. For 4? Probably going to give you a run for your money. For 5? That's a real challenge, are you ready for it?

Stoney's Sexytime Slaying Strategy: Drop totems out of range of the elite mob. I use SoE, Healing, Magma, WF but if the mob fears then substitute in a Tremor Totem. If they poison sub in a Cleansing. Pull from max range with LB. Use the next cooldowns for, in this order: Feral Spirit, Bloodlust/Heroism, Shamanistic Rage. DESTROY. Use MW4-5 procs to heal yourself up with a Healing Wave when your health drops below 65%. Otherwise MW5s go to LBs.

If you died or that didn't pan out my alternate strategy is to pop Sham Rage after the wolves despawn. That gives you 45 seconds of Lust/Hero + wolf heals then another 15 seconds of reduced damage. I was able to solo every elite quest I came up against while leveling in WotLK using this strategy, except for the Amphitheater of Anguish and one other one in Icecrown. Granted I was in full T6 / Black Temple level gear, but the strategy is still the same. (And I did go back to the Amphitheater in Naxx gear and soloed everything but Vladof; it was a lot of fun)